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Proxy Plan If the architectural firm of Ripley and LeBoutillier had its way sixty-five years ago, this model could have been titled "Welcome to the new Northeastern." The well-regarded Boston firm was one of five entering a 1934 competition, devised by the university's Board of Trustees, to design a new campus that would meet the needs of the growing institution, which was on the verge of establishing independence from the Boston YMCA. In a program printed for the competition, the trustees intimated their eagerness for autonomy: "The owner does not desire that the exterior design, bulk, and materials of the adjacent YMCA building . . . nor the Opera House across the avenue, nor the other buildings in the vicinity, shall influence the architects in presenting their own designs for the new University." Ripley and LeBoutillier's Beaux Arts conception, though loftily grand, was apparently too overshadowed by the Y for the trustees' taste. (The YMCA is the blockish, U-shaped building to the left of the tower.) Art and architecture professor Mardges Bacon notes that the administration required a design that "would be sympathetic to its vision of the future." That vision became evident when the trustees chose a more modernistic plan submitted by Boston architects Coolidge Shepley Bulfinch and Abbott. Their master plan was a forerunner of the oldest part of today's campus, centered around Krentzman Quadrangle and looking out upon Huntington Avenue. Now the new master plan surveys a space many times that of the first campus, confidently evincing the self-image of an established and vibrant institution.